The Only Way Home is Through the Show (Book)

Performance Work of Lois Weaver

Edited by Lois Weaver and Jen Harvie

Lois Weaver is one of the world's leading figures in feminist and lesbian performance, a true pioneer in the growing field. This book offers the first book-length assessment of her career and work, tracing its history, aesthetics, principles, inspirations, innovations, and more. Contributors include Weaver's most important collaborators from throughout her career, as well as many of the leading feminist theorists, journalists, and performers of the past forty years. The book also includes interviews not just with Weaver, but also with her partner, in life and performance, Peggy Shaw, and groundbreaking theatre maker Muriel Miguel. The result is a book that is truly unprecedented, a lavishly illustrated and expertly curated celebration of an incredible career.

Series: Intellect Live

Edition

Lois Weaver is one of the world's leading figures in feminist and lesbian performance, a true pioneer in the growing field. This book offers the first book-length assessment of her career and work, tracing its history, aesthetics, principles, inspirations, innovations and more. Contributors include Weaver's most important collaborators from throughout her career, as well as many of the leading feminist theorists, journalists, and performers of the past forty years. The book also includes interviews not just with Weaver, but also with her partner, in life and performance, Peggy Shaw, and groundbreaking theatre maker Muriel Miguel. The result is a book that is truly unprecedented, a lavishly illustrated and expertly curated celebration of an incredible career.

Lois Weaver is a performance artist, writer, director, and activist. 

Jen Harvie is a professor of contemporary theatre and performance at Queen Mary University of London.

Foreword Peggy Shaw 

Introduction: welcome home Jen Harvie 

Red pajamas Lois Weaver

Pink Tornado (from Faith and Dancing) Lois Weaver

Places to start Jen Harvie

Lois Weaver: the college years Charles L. Hayes

Jen Harvie interviews Lois Weaver

Jen Harvie and Lois Weaver

Lois Weaver interviews Muriel Miguel

Lois Weaver and Muriel Miguel

Virginia Started Over (from Faith and Dancing) Lois Weaver

What does it mean to be femme?

Virginia Was the East (from Faith and Dancing) Lois Weaver

Subject and Object (from Faith and Dancing) Lois Weaver

Jesus Wept (from Faith and Dancing) Lois Weaver

Citizen femme Jen Harvie

A femme on her own Peggy Phelan

A woman disguised as a woman: Lois Weaver’s fem(me)inist performances Lisa Duggan

For Lois: femme glorious Joan Nestle

Lois Weaver has great hair Moe Angelos

A view from the bottom Sue-Ellen Case

A view from the top Lois Weaver

Femme Cha-cha (from Lust and Comfort) Lois Weaver

Oh, for the love of work!

Lois, love, and work Jen Harvie

Looking back from behind Deb Margolin

Fire in My Pocket (from Split Britches) Deb Margolin

Weaver’s web Stacy Makishi

On Lois, for Lois, because of Lois Jill Dolan

The permanence of a performance Jess Dobkin 

A queer family tree The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein

Lois Elin Diamond

On the road Helen Paris

Staying on the road Leslie Hill

Floods (from Miss America) Lois Weaver

You Never Told Me (from Miss America) Lois Weaver

The good guide for creating a non cooperative; or, how to organise a collective that will last for more than 30 years Lois Weaver

Imagine it, make it, change it Jen Harvie

Incandescence: The early years at WOW, Cynthia Carr

WOW: an uncooperative cooperative Holly Hughes

Lois Weaver makes the world a less scary place Rosana Cade

Taking a seat at the Table Deirdre Heddon

Long Table Protocol Lois Weaver

Entertaining discussion: The Long Table and Porch Sitting, Geraldine Harris

How to behave at a Porch Sitting Lois Weaver

Lois Weaver and the ethics and etiquette of the Long Table Diana Taylor

Collaboration Lois Keidan

Kinship Lois Weaver

Tammy interviews Lois Lois Weaver

‘I Got into the Wrong Car in Memphis’, ‘Demented Forsythia, a Love Song’, and ‘How Do You Sing a Broken Song’ Lois Weaver

Tammy WhyNot: stage/life superhero Jen Harvie

What Tammy taught me... about surviving as a poor girl in the academy Kim Solga

Making fun and making time: pedagogic principles Erin Hurley

Cupcake velocity: the subversive expertise of Lois Weaver and Tammy WhyNot Johanna Linsley

‘Stay Gone’ Lois Weaver

String of Lights (adapted from Salad of the Bad Café) Lois Weaver

Diary of a Domestic Terrorist Lois Weaver

Hidden treasures Jen Harvie

Lois performs in Aotearoa New Zealand Catherine Silverstone 

‘Everything’s breakable’ – or what I learned from Lois Weaver Benjamin Gillespie

Talking about When the Tide Is Out, Lois Weaver and Stacy Makishi

Lois’s hidden treasures: What Tammy Needs to Know About Prison Caoimhe McAvinchey

Meeting Lois Weaver Anne Tallentire

Dear Carmen Paul Heritage

Laundry (from Faith and Dancing) Lois Weaver

Afterwords

33 ways to start Lois Weaver

Still counting Lois Weaver

Postcards

Lois Weaver Timeline, Jen Harvie with Lois Weaver

'It is only fitting that the book that chronicles the career of pioneering feminist, lesbian performance artist, Lois Weaver is exceptional in its own right. This volume is a work of love with contributions from many of Lois’s collaborators, feminist theorists and writers.'

Morgan Gwenwald, GLBT Reviews

'Arguably, overall and above all, this volume helps to fill what has always been, and still is, a lamentable gap in terms of the documentation of feminist performance practices. Just as Lois expresses her debt to Muriel Miguel of Spiderwoman Theater for equipping her with the ‘tools’ that made it possible to make her own work and in turn hand these on to others (67), this book is a valuable means of communicating genealogies and legacies that are vital to sustaining and enhancing feminist performance cultures. In short, this is essential reading for all those makers, academics or theatre enthusiasts who share in Lois’s passionately held belief that ‘if you can imagine it you can make it.'

Elaine Aston, Studies in Theatre and Performance

'...The Only Way Home weaves (a word that Weaver’s collaborator Stacy Makishi uses to draw a relation between Weaver’s work and her last name) together visuals with words, at times even presenting Weaver’s production notes and her drafts of performance creation as visuals (149). From these carefully laid out depictions, we grow to understand the work and the woman behind it.' 

Megan Shea, The Drama Review
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